Endurance and Empowerment: Transforming Lives While Smartly Scaling Businesses with Mike Hawker

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today, we'll be breaking down endurance and empowerment, transforming lives while smartly scaling businesses. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Mike Hawker and the EO Fire Studios. Mike is a 240-mile ultra-marathoner, girl dad, business owner, investor, and mental health advocate. Currently with Codev, he's transforming businesses and enriching lives by helping companies scale their teams internationally.

0:38In today's foundation, we'll talk about impactful customer growth, impactful employee growth. We'll talk about doing hard things, international scaling, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Mike and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented.

1:11The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Mike, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Fire Nation, it's good to be with you. Yeah. So, you know, honestly, I don't know if this is something that a lot of people would disagree with, but John, I think it's a change to something that we commonly say. Everybody says it's all about who you know, or it's all about your network. Something that I've added to that as of late in my life is it's all about who you know and what they think of you.

1:54When I add that in, it just makes me feel like there's a little bit something deeper. I got to go a little bit deeper to try to figure out how I can build this relationship. I want people to be like, I trust Mike. I want him to come along with what I'm doing. I want to invest in what he's doing. And I just don't think it's really something that can happen on the surface level. Well, I love this quote and this mentality, and it's not exactly along the lines of what I'm about to share, but it kind of does mesh in a good way, which is that Maya Angelou quote, which is people, they will forget what you say.

2:27They'll forget what you do, but they will never forget how you make them feel. So how are you making people feel, Fire Nation? What do people think about you when you're not there? Think about that as we talk about endurance and empowerment, transforming lives while smartly scaling businesses. And you, Mike, have quite the story of endurance. I mean, you're an ultra marathoner. We're talking 240 miles. And also in business. I mean, you have quite a story there as well. But we do have a lot to talk about value-wise today. So I want to keep this tight, you know, around three minutes. But tell us your story.

3:07When I was in high school, I started working for my buddy's grandpa, who was a concrete business owner. And he came from a tiny, tiny, small town. And it was from that time that I saw, I was like, look, I've got the ability to kind of choose my destiny in terms of all these dreams that I dream, like big things that I want to do. And I've always been that dreamer. And I was like, I just never knew how to get there. But I saw him from this tiny town, no business background. He had floor seats to the jazz. And when we were young, we just thought that was so cool. And for decades, I was like, man, he just sits on the floor at every jazz game.

3:41Like, this is so cool. And it was really at that time, I was like, you don't have to fit a mold. Like there is no mold that you have to fit to become successful. And success is different for everybody. But he built this empire of concrete business. And it all started with the foundations, not that he was building for these homes, but the foundations that he was building in his friendships, like everybody loved him. And that was my first lesson into like how to be an entrepreneur and really grow a business through relationships. And then things in life, they're always hard. And I started adding hard things like endurance and stuff.

4:19And those are the things that I really take into business and life and things that they kind of touch on everything. These endurance races that I do truthfully help me grow businesses. They help me in my family life. They help me in everyday life. And I just think as humans, we need to push ourselves and we need to do hard things. And I think a lot of listeners that listen to you do that. That's what they do and why they love doing it. So we're all kind of gluttons for punishment in our own ways. Glutton for punishment. I'll say that, you know, going on a 240 mile ultra marathon is a little more gluttony for punishment than most, but you know, I'll stick to my 5 ,000 step power walks with my dog Gus every day.

5:00I mean, that's, that's only in the morning, by the way, I do that again in the evening. So that's a double gluttony for punishment right there. That's exactly right. So I want to move on to a couple of things, but before we do anything you want to tie up with a bow with that story. Creating those relationships is what's going to move us forward. And that's just something that why I'm in the business that I'm in now, we create relationships and that as long as we are taking a step forward, you do 5 ,000, the comparison is a bad thing. I don't care if it's one or 5 ,000, a step forward every single day is all we're asking for.

5:31Yeah. And to kind of add another quote on, which I'm a big believer in, which is, listen, if you compare yourself to anybody else, Fire Nation, you will despair. Compare and despair. The only person you need and should be comparing yourself to is you yesterday. Are you winning that comparison? Are you taking one more step than you yesterday? And by the way, every now and then you can lose that comparison because that's okay. But if more times than not, you're winning the comparison of you yesterday, you will win at life. And we all want growth, Mike. But you personally focus on impactful customer growth.

6:10Tell us more. Man, the post-COVID life has been crazy, right? So everybody now works remote. And in our business, that was a great thing for us. We have four offices across the Philippines, and it's been amazing. but what's been greatest is helping companies grow their company in an impactful way and when I say impactful that means scaling in a way that is not only helping them and saving them money and being more budget friendly and all those things but we found a way to do it by really really helping other people get jobs in areas that they probably couldn't have gotten them in any other way.

6:49And so, yes, I am here to help companies grow and expand and exceed and do it in a more budget-friendly way. But we are here to show you that you can do it in a way that is just so impactful, not only to you, but to somebody else around you. It's not paying the guy up the road or paying the guy that comes into the office, which is great. That's impacting a life. But we are impacting many, many lives in ways that just are really different across the globe. Now, you also focus on impactful employee growth, which frankly is an area that a lot of people don't focus on. So tell us more about that. Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up.

7:27And that's something that we really hit on in our office. So sometimes I even get emotional talking about these things. So the impactful employee growth to me is one of the biggest reasons why we're here. We do things, as you said, a little bit differently than a lot of companies that do things similar that we do. So we, yeah, and John, I'll be honest with you, it hurts our bottom line at times and it hurts our scaling and the ability to scale at maybe the speed at which maybe an outside investor would like us to grow at. But we are totally okay with that. Let me tell you why. We have the ability to provide our team members with benefits and things that we're used to getting here in the US.

8:09Health insurance, IT support, computers, office space, all of that is provided. by us. And we have a team that supports that and does all of that. And again, it makes the scale a little bit slower, but we've signed off that all of us as leadership are totally okay with that. We have a saying in our company that we say careers and not gigs. And that's big for us. We want to bring people in and offer them a career. I don't want a one month or two month project. I want to bring them in and say, you're going to be here for five or six years with this customer that we're putting you in front of. We also provide office spaces.

8:48I mentioned we have four office spaces in the Philippines alone, and that's where we mainly work out of. And that's for stability and connectivity with our customers, which John, our customers want and need, and they love that. But unfortunately, there's typhoons and there's earthquakes and there's all these things that happen there. And when those things happen, we have water, we have food, we have water filters. We have air conditionings that run on the generators that if they need a space and offices, they can bring their families and be there until their homes are ready to be back into. So with us helping companies, we have the ability to also help our employees and help people that couldn't land these amazing jobs elsewhere.

9:29And we take massive pride in that. Somebody just came to me while you were talking. I'm just going to put it out there in Fire Nation. I hope you can understand the point I'm trying to make. But sometimes what's not scalable is sustainable. And because you're doing things that necessarily aren't scaling or aren't showing you the path to the rapid, most fast route to growth, what you're instead building is sustainable business because you're building, in this case, loyal employees, people that are going to abandon ship at the first next great opportunity or similar opportunity. You're instead building a team that says, hey, this is family and this is sustainable.

10:10So we have a lot that we're going to talk about, including a couple of cool firsthand stories around this topic. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, we all know that starting a business is hard, but there are tools out there that help make it easier. HubSpot is one of those tools. And just one way HubSpot makes starting a business easier with their all new entrepreneurship kits. This all inclusive kit gives you step-by-step guidance and frameworks to help you crush every stage of starting a business. I'm talking project management, professional email, and skill development templates, in addition to an entire solopreneur guide and freelance pricing worksheets.

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12:01Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash fire. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Running a business takes a lot of time and effort. And when you're focused on business growth, it's easy to let self-care slip. But something I prioritize every single day, no matter what, is my health, both physical and mental. In addition to the daily supplements and workouts are spaces of time I give myself to just relax. No devices, no music, just peace and quiet. But I know how difficult it can be to make this happen in between the chaos of daily life. So if you need a little help creating space like this, then therapy can help.

12:40And there's no better way to get started than with BetterHelp. BetterHelp is online therapy that's flexible to fit in your schedule. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. It's really that simple. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash fire today to get 10 % off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com slash fire. I've mentioned this a couple of times. I'm gonna say it one more time. I mean, 240 mile marathon. I mean, think about that Fire Nation. And that really leads into, Mike, the fact that you believe in doing hard things and that how pushing our limits can directly translate to building businesses.

13:26Tell us more. This is one of my favorite subjects, not only because doing things like that are some of the greatest moments and times of my life, but the lessons that I take away from these literally help me in my everyday life. I've had the ability to do a lot of public speaking in these things, And I always have four points, whether it's for a business crowd or a outside of business crowd. Highs and lows are something that we will experience in every aspect of our lives, whether it's building a business, whether it's running 240 miles, whether it's running one mile. You will always have a higher low.

14:05And sometimes they're more extreme than others. But is what I've learned through all of these things is we have to be present in those highs and lows. We have to be present and understand that in those highs, it feels so good and everything is good. But there may be a time that we may start feeling a little bit of a drop and that's okay. And the second we hit that low, we are present in that and we just have to understand that, look, we are comfortable with the uncomfortable and the sun will come up at some point. The sun always comes up and in business it comes up, in life it comes up. We have to be present and learn those lessons that we're needing to learn and know the sun will come up.

14:48That's one that I always try to push no matter what. The other couple are just are kind of easy, like know your strengths and weaknesses is what people forget, though, is they want to get only better. They want to only get better at their weaknesses. But I really try to teach and push with my team and my family. We got to get better at our strengths and weaknesses, continually take a step forward on each of those. And then I have a bullet that I talk to everybody about, and you just hit on it, and I'm so glad that you did. I have in bold everywhere, it says do not compare. Don't compare yourself.

15:19Don't compare your business to others. The comparison is the cancer that will end everything. If you want something great to end, start comparing yourself to others and not to yourself. And then last, there's a quote by Angela Duckworth who did a TED Talk about grit. Grit is my favorite thing in the world. And I'm just going to read it and then I'll let you take it away. But it says, grit is passion and perseverance for every long-term goal. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out. Not just for a week, not just for a month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality.

15:54Grit is living life like it's a marathon and not a sprint. I love that and I kind of live by that. Angela, speak the truth, girl. Way to rock that. What a fantastic book. And, you know, a quote, and I know we're kind of maybe over quoting you a little bit, Fire Nation, but I mean, they're so relevant to what we're talking about here today. And this quote really came up while you were talking, Mike, which is, you know, this too shall pass. And the reason why I love that phrase is because it's on both ends of the spectrum. You're having the worst day in the world. If you're having the worst business experiences and this is happening and it's just an absolute crap show, this too shall pass.

16:30But guess what? If you're crushing it, if everything's working, everything's clicking on all cylinders, you're on cloud nine, this too shall pass. Like you need to realize that, hey, I need to enjoy the highs and really tolerate the lows because I'm not going to live in either one of those extremes. I'm going to be somewhere in the middle for most of the time. And that can really help you with both ends of that. Now, I want to talk about international scaling. I mean, you mentioned a little bit about this with the Philippines earlier, but a lot of people are scared to go down that route, which is understandable, but you tackled this opportunity head on.

17:07So take that away. Yeah, for sure. And they should be scared. It's something different. And there's a dynamic to it that's not totally easy. We love somebody to come in the office, but is what we tell customers is if you're going to hire somebody down the street and they're going to be fully remote, why not hire somebody across the world at a far more budget-friendly rate? And then we go into what that means for them. I think what makes people really scared, and rightfully so, it is a different way to do business. We do things different, again, than other companies. We bring on a stateside customer success team.

17:47So we have teams here that you are in contact with at the minimum once a month to ensure that you're doing what you're doing or that you're getting exactly what you're needing. We help you set up what the process looks like to work with a team overseas. We help you ensure that that process is functioning and giving you the return that you're needing every single time that you're, you know, If you need to add team members, you come to us and we're going to help you find them. There's also talent management in the Philippines from our side as well. It's not a set it and forget it for us, John. And I think that that's the fear.

18:23It's like, okay, I'm going to hire this person and then I'm going to be on an island and I'm not going to have any way, shape, or form to figure out exactly what's going on. I don't know if they're clocking in. I don't know if they're clocking out. That is just not the way that we do things. We have teams on both sides of the water. They're going to make sure that you are successful. And that is how we found our success is ensuring that customer is just happy all the way through. We love hearing success stories. And we were talking earlier before the break about impactful employee growth, and you did admit that sometimes you get a little choked up about this.

19:00So give us one or two employee success stories that just knock it out of the wazoo that you've had over the past couple of years? Yeah. So I had a customer reach out to me three weeks ago and we deal with, obviously some of our biggest customers are large tech companies. And we had a customer reach out and say, Hey, we've got 11 people with you and five of them have been with us for a very long time. And we want to supply them with equity and stock in our company. That is a life-changing thing for any of us. That's a life-changing thing for any of us that could be a part of that. And the team, when they received that, were so grateful, so gracious, and they were able to do things for their family that they weren't able to do, and they're planning on their future and going to be able to invest with that.

19:51But that is one of my favorites. But this last one, I just learned about a month ago, and it just hits home every single time. I've really been trying to get to know some of our employees. We have a lot out there, but I try to get on 10 to 15 minute calls with him. And I was talking to this gentleman and he was raised in the province or in the Philippines. It's out in the country is what we would call it. And he was raised with absolutely nothing, dirt floors, very, very minimal roof over his head. And he decided that he wanted to go to school. So he decided to find out a way that the government could help him do that.

20:25So he found some grants and things for the government. He went to college, but he wanted to be a developer, but he couldn't afford a computer. So he would go find these free calendars that these stores would give out. He would write his code on the blank paper on the back. He would code with his pencil. And he would fill up backs of calendars with code and code and code. And he would deliver water to get enough money to go to an internet cafe and transfer that code from his paper onto his assignment. And he would do that. He did that for two and a half years with no computer until he finally got it.

21:00The last year and a half, he graduated college. He got a job as a junior developer. He worked there, was able to get to a mid and senior level role where then he moved over to our company. He's worked for us at Codev since. And he sent me some pictures the other day of him in a house that he had just bought with his parents, moved them in, and he bought a car. And he is now paid for his nieces and nephews college tuition as well. So generational changes is just puts a smile on my face every time. Fire Nation, if that doesn't put a smile on your face, then you might be in the wrong industry. And Mike, I just want to say you've dropped so many value bombs today.

21:41If you were to step back and say, hey, this is the one thing I want to really make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today. What is that one thing? You know, the one thing is I truly believe at the core to all of this is that you can build a successful business and have the greatest people-focused company at the same time. I think that sometimes those two things feel like they can't go hand in hand. But I am a true believer that those two things can and should be intertwined and intermixed, that relationships and scalability can go hand in hand and will if you do it the right way. And if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more, what is your call to action for our listeners today?

22:29Awesome. So I've got a couple of Mike underscore Axel on Instagram, and I do a lot of my endurance and running stuff on there. But more importantly, Codev on LinkedIn and then just Mike Hawker there. I'm super active on LinkedIn. If anybody wanted to connect and chat, reach out. I would love to talk about any of this endurance stuff. Any, I love to talk and communicate. So let's do it. Fire Nation, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with MH and JLD today. So keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Mike, M-I-K-E in the search bar.

23:09The show notes page will pop right up. And Mike, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Mike for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free, freepodcastcourse.com. I will catch you there or on the flippity flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

23:46Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.